Chinese New Year may be a time for visiting family, friends and having plenty of good food, but if you do not watch what you are putting into your mouth during this festive period, you can easily pile on the pounds.
Here are some tips from Lee Yee Hong, a dietician at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, on how to stay slim – but also still be able to indulge in some of the sinful pineapple tarts, bakkwa, love letters and cashew nut cookies at the same time.
1. Drink water
Take lots of water over the Chinese New Year period. This is because quite often, people mistaken the body’s thirst signals for hunger, and you may reach for another pineapple tart when you may be feeling thirsty rather than hungry.
So before you go to your next festive event or visit the next house, make sure you drink a few sips of water. At the same time, unlike festive goodies which are loaded with sugar and calories, water contains zero calories. So it is the perfect beverage to watch your waistline without piling on the pounds.
Lee adds too, that water can also help to flush out the accumulating waste substances – after a day of feasting.
2. Watch your portions
According to the dietician, watching what you put into your mouth and limiting your intake is a good way to prevent yourself from putting on unnecessary calories. It does not mean that you have to completely ban yourself from taking any cookies or tarts. Instead of sitting near the food and mindlessly munching from the jar, you should limit your snacking to two or three pieces per snack, and keep the jar of goodies far away from you.
3. Eat a healthy snack prior to your visiting rounds
According to Lee, if you go visiting on an empty stomach, you are more likely to be hungry and end up snacking on the unhealthy snacks available. But by eating something healthy such as a piece of fruit, like an apple, you will be less likely to over-snack. And at the same time, you will be putting nutrients such as fibre into your body, rather than simple sugars and trans-fats that are from the unhealthy festive goodies.
Also, if you are the one receiving guests, try and keep healthy snacks around such as the Amazin’Graze granolas, rather than taking out the usual pineapple tarts and almond cookies. At the same time, your guests will also probably welcome the healthy snacks too, as they would possibly have eaten a lot of the sinful stuff already.
4. Plan a workout schedule
Just because it is the festive season, it does not mean that you can take it as an excuse to forgo your exercise routine. Lee urges that you should try to discipline yourself to work out – especially if you know that you will be feasting on the festive goodies later.
If you do not have the time to work out properly, the dietician advises that you should attempt to make it a point to slot in at least 30 minutes of walking or jogging on most days during the Chinese New Year season. Wake up 30 minutes earlier for your exercise, if you are short of time.
Or else if you are really too exhausted for that due to the early mornings and long days, try and make every opportunity to exercise, for example, park your car as far away as possible from your destination and take the stairs instead of the elevator.
5. Sleep Enough
Even though you love playing mahjong with your relatives till the early hours of the morning, this isn’t going to be good for your health, according to Lee. This is because by not sleeping, you will end up making bad food choices and forgoing your workout plans due to lack of time, and this in turn, will lead to bingeing on unhealthy foods.
The average person should try to get seven to eight hours of sleep every night.
So this means that if you are feeling sluggish or lethargic due to a lack of sleep, you should try and take a nap whenever you can – for example, when you are on a bus going from house to house.
6. Make your reunion dinner healthy
At least if you are going to binge on unhealthy snacks during the Chinese New Year period, try and make up for it with a healthy home-made reunion dinner rather than eating rich foods at the Chinese restaurant, according to Lee.
Some tips to prepare a healthy meal, according to Lee, include adding plenty of vegetables to your cooking, choosing lean or skinless meat rather than fatty meat, picking cooking sauces with the Healthier Choice symbol and providing drinks such as home-made iced lemon juice or flower tea rather than sweetened packaged beverages. Also try and serve brown rice instead of white rice, as these contain nutrients and fibre.
This article has been adapted from https://www.mountelizabeth.com.sg/healthplus/article/7-tips-to-stay-slim-and-healthy-chinese-new-year.
Leave a Comment